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RE: Warlock: Fatal Bonds should be used as much as possible when enemy heroes get near the creep line to harass them. They will likely start to play more passively as a result; only put one point in this skill (ideally at level 2) to prevent it from pushing the lane too hard. Shadow Word is incredibly inefficient in terms of mana cost at level 1, so try to hold off on using it until you have another level in it. It's generally best to save Shadow Word to heal your lanemate, but if you have an urn throwing down both DoTs can be very effective on a fleeing enemy. Upheaval is quite simply one of the best slows in the game. In a team fight, you'll want to throw down Fatal Bonds, Ult, and your ultimate as quickly as possible. This will prevent heroes with blink daggers from escaping your slow thanks to the Golem's Immolation. Try to keep your Golem alive with Shadow Word, as it gives a large bounty if the enemy heroes score a last hit on it.

Because your heal is passive rather than reactive, you'll probably want to grab a Mekanism to save your teammate in clutch moments. Arcane boots are a must-have to keep your mana pool up, and aura items like Ring of Basilius and Drum of Endurance benefit both your team and your Golem. Of course, you'll probably be the one buying courier, and the single most effective thing you can do as a support is to keep key areas warded at all times. During laning, this will probably be the rune spots as that's where most mids will gank from, but you may also want to block jungle spawns or place it in between the enemy's towers while pushing.

If you're swimming in gold (not likely) grab an Aghanim's Scepter+Refresher and laugh as your four Golems destroy the enemy team.

His two ult powers are basically a knockback+hit penalty and the tp ally thing, right?

KotL's other Ulti ability is that Illuminate doesn't need you to stand still whilst channeling it. When you activate it, a ghostly form of yourself is created which channels the spell whilst you are free to run off. You can trigger it manually or cast after the channel as normal; it casts from the spot that you initiated it from.

I think this is what safewood meant by safe counterpushing - you run in, initiate Illuminate, then leave. The horses do their thing whilst you head for the hills.

Don't understimate the knockback on his new Ulti skill either. It's surprisingly disruptive to an enemy team and you can easily pull one person out of a group for a gank or save your team that's being chased down by knocking back the enemies closing in.

Maybe it's just because I'm playing against bots, but my warlock ult summon never stays alive. Even towers put him down pretty quickly. The only time he feels effective is the initial summon damage and just killing creep lines. It felt same-y even with an Aghanim Sceptre. I'm sure he can be effective somehow, and I've had good success harassing with Fatal Bonds, but I still feel more useful as Keeper by giving mana and using his other skills.

It is probably because of the bots. I'm in the upper tiers of matchmaking and the only time my Infernal(s) is/are instantly killed is if they get a Diffusal blade (purge instagibs it).

Bots play quite a bit differently, not necessarily better (except when it comes long ranged heroes last hitting). For instance they have far faster reactions than any human and tend to 5-man much more often than a human team does. You also don't learn some things as you play against (and especially if you play with them). Examples include, counterwarding pull camps and wardblocking pull camps, playing against certain team comps and playstyles, or animation cancelling (not necessary for beginners but it still is a very useful skill to know for heroes with long cast animations, or getting used to early fighting over pull camps.

Disclaimer: You might have had a different experience than I have. Nearly all my bot matches has been versus unfair bots, and my sample size is quite small (2 - 3 matches whenever new heroes are released).

I'm regularly playing medium bots, and they do a lot of 4/5-man ganks. Warding isn't really necessary when botting medium, so I know I've not really learned their use. You don't really have to pull camps or anything either, so I only know of the concept. When I queued up with a friend to try Hard bots, they were denying us very consistently, and it turned out to be a very un-fun loss.

So, for as much as I think I've learned in my month of playing, I'm realistic to know that there's a whole side of things I've barely even gotten into. (and some little things still, like I hadn't noticed until last night that you can buy boots at the side lane shops)

Warlock's Golem is spell immune, so it benefits doubly from armor-providing items like Ring of Basilius and Mekanism. Hopefully someone on your team is smart enough to grab either a Vlad's or an Assault Cuirass; they provide incredibly strong auras for your Golem but aren't exactly ideal buys on Warlock. I think you'll find that Warlock combos best with other AoE disables like Tidehunter, Magnus, and Enigma because not only will you be disabling the enemy for a disgusting amount of time but your Golem will be free to wail on your hapless enemies.

I'm sorry to say it but the Infernal is not magic immune, it has slightly higher magic resist (33% opposed to standard 25%). As long as you micro it properly it shouldn't be difficult to keep it alive, as long is it doesn't get purged that is because it has a good hp regen (50 hp/s) so you just run it away if its about to be killed, and when it is healed just run it back in again.

I would so love to join a friendly DOTA group. The problem is that I live in Taiwan, which puts me really far from Europe, ping wise, and as such playing on the european servers is pretty much unbearable, I would estimate there to be half a second of delay between inputs and actions occuring. The closest bearable servers would be the east US or Shanghai. So I imagine that would be an issue.

I'm going to start being more active when it comes to organizing events, we've one tonight at 7PM GMT, and there will be many more to come. Just assemble in the mumble (85.236.101.45 23462) and anounce you'd like to play

Hello people!
I want to play DOTA2 with you guys! I'm pretty new to the game, want to play as a team as matchmaking matches sadly lack teamwork most of the time. So do I just join the steamgroup and mumble and hop in whenever an event is up?

Yes you should just be able to join the group and see who's around. There is another RPS Dota 2 group called "Rock, Dota, Noob" whose thread is here, the emphasis obviously being on newer players. Feel free to join in and get on the mumble to see who's about. There are a few players who are clear of the five-hundred hour mark on Dota now and probably don't deserve the "noob" tag any more, but there are others like me who have jobs to go to and are still lurking around the hundred hour range, and some even newer folk just starting out as you are.

To me Timbersaw is a quite strange* hero, and he is very difficult to lane.

Because he isn't very survivable in the earliest levels** he is ill suited as a solo laner, he might deal well with his lane if he faced a similarily weak opponent but he would have a hard time dealing with most matchups. Making him solo a sidelane can also only work if he is facing a weaker lane, aka weak sololaner or double melee with bad or no cc. The way I see it he would struggle very much versus any dual lane with a ranged hero harrassing him.

The best situation I can see for him would be as the farmer in an aggressive or defensive trilane coupled with heroes with some reliable early cc (i.e SD, Rubick, maybe CM but she has her issues, Bane or Jakiro), because he isn't able to do much with the farm he should concede it to a better scaling hero when he has hit level 6 or 7, and proceed to go gank and dive the other lanes.

He has a possibility to pull off big plays but he is far from a reliable hero (not high risk high reward, more of a mid risk low reward).

*The only thing he really excell at is diving the tier one towers, and semi early teamfights given that they happen in the right places. He scales poorly yet he requires quite a bit of early farm to truly fill his, rather limited, role well.
**Until he has several levels in Timberchain and one level in reactive armor he is actually very easy to kill.

Medusa

The way I see her she is super strong late game carry with a long wind-up time fairly bad earlygame.

What makes Medusa Medusa is split shot and mana shield and to some extent her ultimate.

Not much to discuss about, it functions both as a battlefury on some pretty crazy steroids as well as making teamfights unbearable for the softer members of the opposing team.

Mana Shield is also really strong. For those unfamiliar with its mechanics it is the equivalent of getting 17 extra armor and 50% reduced magic damage (62,5% if you factor in the inherent magic resist of the hero), for as long as your manapool allows it.

Her ult is IMO quite lackluster unless your countering illusion based heroes, then it is great.

If you are able to survive until late game it is few things able to withstand a 6 slotted medusa backed by her team. Pro tip illusions inherit split shot.

[QUOTE=safewood;245888Her ult is IMO quite lackluster unless your countering illusion based heroes, then it is great.[/QUOTE]

Silly mortal, that's nonsense you're speaking there.

Lets see, an ulti which gives a total slow to the enemy team, removes all their positive buffs, destroys illusions and just outright looks awesome?

* Omniknight? Say goodbye to your ult, silly wabbit.
* Illusionists? How about no?
* Sven? I heard you like being slow and without your speed or armor.
* Magnus? Splash? Who can splash the snake in her own waters?
* Dazzle? That grave seems deep all of a sudden.

It's just such a good overall ulti. And on the last level, it has zero manacost and a short cooldown. She's a beast which can't be easily counter-initiated.

Tho, it really does take all those six slots to shine. I usually like: Skadi, Manta, Daedalus, Linken, Butterfly and Threads.

I feel like playing Drow every game (I know, I'm scum) to bring my win percentage up is going to screw me over when I actually reach a point where I get competent teammates. Maybe I should go back to Invoker...